


Hiraeth

by peculiarlamb



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Angst, Cross-Posted on Wattpad, Dark, Dark Draco Malfoy, F/M, Hufflepuff/Slytherin Inter-House Relationships, Malfoy Manor (Harry Potter), Possessive Behavior, Possessive Draco Malfoy, Protective Draco Malfoy, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Smut, Tragic Romance, Well-Written, Wizarding Wars (Harry Potter)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-15 12:08:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29435829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peculiarlamb/pseuds/peculiarlamb
Summary: They said love conquers all, but does it truly? A second war is coming. The horrors of it unfolds right before their eyes and tears them apart. Odette Coventry is nothing like the girl she was when Draco Malfoy had fallen for her when they were younger.The war has changed them both.Years later, will she still recognise Draco as the boy she loved or will he be just another rank in Voldemort's army? As the war rages on for longer than anyone anticipated, is there really nothing that they can do to end the Dark Lord's reign?
Relationships: Draco Malfoy & Original Female Character(s), Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Kudos: 1





	1. Prelude

**Author's Note:**

> hello, dears. this is a work that i’ve posted on wattpad but decided to post here as well. you may find me there under the same user. if you’ve read it before, hello again! if you haven’t, i hope you’ll give it a chance. <3

**DISCLAIMERS AND WARNINGS**

This is a dark and mature take on the Harry Potter Universe. There will be mature content set throughout the story, thread with caution. Content such as descriptions of injuries and gore, themes surrounding war, sexual assault, mentions and threats of torture, explicit sexual scenes, mature language and so forth will be present.

This is purely a fanfiction created from my imagination. I do not take credit for anything other than my writing, storyline and original characters. The rest belongs to the rightful author of the Harry Potter Universe.

I have made sure to tag this story with the appropriate tags, but just in case it had slipped your notice, this is a slowburn Draco Malfoy and original character fanfic. It revolves around a serious storyline and includes many elements of the Wizarding World that I wished we could have seen more in the books and films. If this is your cup of tea, welcome.

Another notable disclaimer is that some of the characters may not be as 'in character' or true to their books and film-adapted selves. That is because I interpret the characters differently and write accordingly to how I assume they would act or react in this piece of fictional world I've created. And if some of them are expressed in a way that you're familiar with, it may be because I included some headcanons that aligned with how I interpret the characters.

The idea for this story came to me as I was entertaining the thought of how the Wizarding War would be like if not written as a children book. I was also very intrigued by the concept of creating a version of Draco Malfoy that wasn't influenced by the author's will to portray him as a spiteful bully.

I feel like his character has a lot of potential to be explored and expanded. I spent some time reconstructing his character, so hopefully you'll enjoy this version of Draco as much as I did writing him. In this story, the original main character is a Hufflepuff and through her I would like to touch on the darker aspects of Hufflepuffs that I feel like should be introduced or talked about more.

The initial chapters will be more lighthearted in order for you to build an emotional connection with the story and characters. But as the story progresses, darker themes will be introduced as we progress into the retelling of the war. This story is intended to be sad and angsty. Some details may not correlate to the films and books.

I appreciate any creative feedback and constructive criticism, but do please be kind as it's been a long time since I've delved into the world of fanfiction writing. Enjoy your time reading! Please vote for each chapter if you can, leave comments and share this story with your friends—it will motivate me so much and brighten up my day.

All the love, lamb.


	2. Hollow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello, darlings. i hope you’ll enjoy this first chapter.

_December 2003_

Everything was grey.

The hedges beyond her window stood like an ominous wall. A stark contrast against the bleakness of the sky. She stared at the beginning effects of winter, her dark eyes unseeing. Odette's mind was lost to the memories that she had kept at bay, hidden behind walls that were as tall as the hedges that surrounded the manor.

A prison she had built in her own mind.

She felt empty. The hollowness inside her expanding until she could no longer feel much of anything else. There were no space left for anything that wasn't grief.

It was consuming her—becoming her.

Was it the cold that was numbing her fingertips? Or was it merely the void in her chest? She could no longer tell if the coldness she felt was a factor of her exteriors or if it emitted from within her.

How did it all come to this?

She could sense movement from her peripheral vision and turned in time to see a house-elf just before it vanished, leaving behind a tray of food on the round table.

She turned back to the window. To the emptiness that laid beyond. The emptiness that mirrored her own. She had no appetite.

When did she become this?

* * *

The silence was heavy. Suffocating.

Odette stared at the plate of food in front of her before casting her gaze at the cloudless sky that stretched endlessly through the ceiling to floor window of the dining room. The view was different from the one in her bedroom. They were in a different wing of the manor afterall. But it evokes the same feeling.

The same emptiness.

She always seemed to be looking out the window, as if she subconsciously expected that someone would appear in the foyer.

"Odette," her mother's voice cut through the oppressive silence in her mind. She sounded worried, her voice wavering. "Please eat something."

She turned to meet her mother's gaze. Her brown eyes looked tensed and she appeared older than Odette remembered. She could not recall when her mother's eyes had lost their warmth.

Silently, she picked up a spoon and ate just because her mother had asked—pleaded her to.

Her hand spasmed the entire course of the dinner.

Later that evening, she shared the velvet longue chair with her mother in the sitting room. Her cold hand was grasped tightly in her mother's, enclosed between the older woman's warmer hands. That was the only part of her that didn't feel helplessly cold.

It was bleeding into midnight. They both sat still in the dim light, staring at the old grandfather clock as the seconds ticked by in an agonising manner. Her mother kept whispering reassuringly to her but her eyes wouldn't meet hers. Not once.

"It'll be alright, darling." _Tick, tick, tick_. "It'll be alright."

Odette felt as though she should be the one comforting her mother. It was her job as a dutiful daughter. But she couldn't bring herself to do it. She had forgotten what it was like to be a daughter that comforts her distressed mother.

They were watching the clock face, but Odette couldn't register the time. She wasn't sure how long they had sat there—with the clock ticking away and her mother murmuring words of comfort like a prayer—until a sharp pop sounded as her brothers apparated into the room.

Their force of entry was so great, it pushed back some of the furnitures and toppled over a vase of fresh flowers.

Odette released the breath she had been holding, immediately feeling her eyes fill with tears of relief. Her mother sprang up from her seat and rushed over to her brothers.

Icarus had been leaning heavily against Corvux, practically propped up against the older brother and barely even holding on—like deadweight. Odette's heart sank and she felt her hands started to spasm over her lap.

But he straightened himself up the moment their mother came close, trying to cover up the wince as he did so. Odette glanced from him to their older brother, who stared back with blank eyes.

Her brothers were both dishevelled. Their brown hair unruly and stuck to their foreheads. Their faces were dirty, smeared with dirt and grime and sweat. Their robes were torn in some places and covered in dirt and dark stains that she tried hard not to think about.

Icarus looked worst for wear. His breathing was haggard and his eyes looked unfocused, even as he tried to wave off their fretful mother.

Odette stood up and helped Corvux manoeuvre their disoriented brother to the longue chair so that he was able to lie down on his back. This close to Corvux, she could smell the battle on his skin and feel the dark magic that clung to him like a second robe.

She could feel it radiating off of Icarus too.

She stepped back instinctively, her small movement attracted her brother's attention.

Corvux looked at her intently. He looked older than he did before he left this morning. The dim candlelight made his features look worn down and thin. He looked like the shell of her brother. A shadow of who he once was.

When had her brother started to look so unfamiliar?

She had been so caught up in her own grief, trying not to drown in it, that she hadn't even noticed when her brother became this hollowed version of himself.

She felt guilt grip tightly at her heart.

Odette reached a shaky hand towards him, feeling her breath hitched in her throat. Before she could touch his shoulder, Corvux shifted to remove Icarus' wand from his limp hand.

She wasn't sure if the action was deliberate or if she was reading into it too much.

"Odette—darling," her mother's strained voice called out. "Can you please bring me my wand? And the tray of potions. I left it by the tabletop—in the hallway."

The order snapped her out of her reverie and she noticed that Icarus was growing paler, losing consciousness. Odette ran into the hallway, extracting her wand from her dress pocket. She accio-ed her mother's wand to her and carefully  
levitated the tray of potions as she returned to the sitting room as quickly as she could.

"What happened?" she heard her mother asked, voice trembling as she stroked Icarus' hair from his forehead.

There was a gash bleeding profusely right above his left eye that started from his temple and extended dangerously close to his eye.

Corvux's voice sounded hoarse, as though he had overused it or strained his vocal chords. "It was supposed to be a small operation—a quick rescue. We were supposed to get the Order hostages out and blow up the chamber. But Charlie—"

Corvux shook his head as if to recollect himself and took off his robes. When he spoke again, his voice lost the initial waver and became stone cold.

"Charlie thought he could snatch some of the data they had. Find out the location of the other lairs—a strategy plan that we can sabotage, perhaps."

He sounded frustrated, tensing his jaw.

Their mother casted several spells over Icarus. One of them started closing the gash on the side of his temple. The skin stitched itself, criss-crossing, regrowing and pulling taut until the gash was nothing but a thin red line that would soon fade into a scar.

Icarus barely winced, he was out cold.

"We were only delayed for about five minutes. The reinforcements came, there were more Death Eaters than we expected. Icarus came back after he left the rescues at the safe-house because we were late and he thought something had went wrong. That idiot."

Corvux rolled up the right sleeve of his dress shirt, revealing a long knife cut that dug deep into his skin. He extracted a tiny vial from his inner pocket and dumped the content onto his wound. A muted, guttural groan escaped through clenched teeth as the Essence of Dittany sealed up the cut.

"I casted a curse and took out a few Death Eaters then I grabbed for Icarus but by then he got hit in the chest with a curse," Corvux's voice went cold. "Right before we apparated, he was there. Mal—"

Corvux cut himself off as he turned sharply to look at Odette, as though he had just remembered that she was still there. Their mother was wide eyed, one of her hands placed on top of Icarus' chest.

In a split second, Corvux was right beside her, his wand in hand. "Someone's here. They've triggered the wards."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i’m still trying to figure out how to navigate this website so please bear with me. <3


	3. Envelope

The silence that blanketed the Coventry manor was stifling and eerie.

Corvux had raised a finger to his lips and raised his wand up to cast a non-verbal spell. Odette walked over to grasp her mother's hand, feeling the sense of trepidation pressing in on them as the room felt suddenly too small.

She watched as her brother walked over to a far wall and placed his hand flat against it. He listened for a moment then jerked back and casted several more intricate spells. Muttering the incantations under his breath and guiding his wand in precise motions in the air.

When Corvux deemed that the wards he added had strengthened enough, he strode over to one of the windows and parted the heavy drapes, just enough to glance out.

Then he lifted his wand.

Every muscle in Corvux's body tensed up and Odette felt instant dread fill her body. She seized up in fear. Her hands started to tremble uncontrollably.

Someone—an intruder had triggered the wards that her family had set up around the estate. Designed to keep unwanted company from breaching it and stepping close to their manor. Corvux looked weary from the battle he had narrowly escaped. Icarus was unconscious and wounded.

She couldn't let her brother fend off the intruder by himself.

Odette willed her hands to stop shaking. She had to try to clear her mind, to drag herself back into the present. Someone was out there. She had to defend her home and protect her family.

She glanced at her mother, met her wide and terrified eyes with her own, before she moved resolutely across the room to stand just behind her brother. With a deep breath she inched forward to peek out the window. Her wand gripped tightly in hand.

There was a silhouette of a hooded figure, standing just beyond the hedges. Their head was lifted as they looked at the second floor, directly at their window. A silver mask obscured their face.

A Death Eater.

* * *

Odette often found herself scrambling to remember. To recall a time from the depths of her mind—a time before she couldn't recognise herself.

That was how she had begun to associate and sort through her memories. Categorised into the before and the after.

Of course, it wasn't always as simple as that. There were some moments that bleed into one another. Others that she couldn't quite recollect. Moments that didn't fit into either category.

Ones that she wished she could forget.

But there are moments that she recalled frequently. The ones that happened before the grief consumed her.

Before the war began. Before things were set into motion and spiraled gradually beyond any of their controls. Before she lost the people she cared about.

She reminisced about her days at Hogwarts most often. Remembering a time when the cold didn't bite at her skin, that didn't seize her heart and tear at her soul. When her heart wasn't just her own.

When her heart had belonged to a dragon.

* * *

_October 1995_

Transfiguration was perhaps one of the more interesting classes taught at Hogwarts. At least that had been the collective opinion of most of the student body.

Odette enjoyed learning it well enough, but she wasn't very exceptional at it. And because of that, she tended to withdraw her interests from things that she didn't immediately excelled in.

It was a bad habit of hers, she supposed.

Being an overachiever runs in the family, so she felt more than compelled to be exceptional in everything she did.

Not to outshine anyone in her regal family history, which was pragmatically impossible, but just so she could keep herself from bringing any manner of disappointment to her family name.

Being a Coventry had it's blessings and it's curses—both in the metaphorical and literal sense.

She managed to arrive in class just on time after her Prefect duties. Almost everyone was already seated, filling the classroom with lively chatter.

She would have been five minutes earlier if she didn't have to run back and collect her completed homework that she had forgotten in the Hufflepuff dorm.

Fifth Year was a strenuous time for almost everyone, especially since they had been given a choice to pursue any additional electives they wished to subject themselves to in adjacent to their core subjects. Not to mention the O.W.Ls examination they had to prepare for. Prefect duties had added on to the strain of her tight schedule.

Whenever Odette wasn't in class, studying in the library or swamped with assignments, she was patrolling the grounds with the other Prefects. Her brother, Alistair, was Head Boy for Hufflepuff so she had tried her best to keep up with the rigorous training programs he had arranged. Determined to make her brothers and parents proud.

The young witch hardly had the time to write home, which she felt guilty about to a great extent. Her brothers were always too busy to remember about writing home, so it had been an unspoken agreement that she would write on their behalf.

She tried to compensate her shorter letters by sending enchanted flowers that would transform into paper butterflies, which her mother had thoroughly adored.

Upon seeing that Professor McGonagall was not in class yet, Odette released a sigh of relief and hurried to her assigned seat.

She exchanged a small smile with her desk-mate, a well-mannered and charming Ravenclaw boy that she didn't know very well.

His older brother happened to be friends with one of her brothers, and he was a great duellist. That was the extent of what she knew about him.

She extracted the book she needed for the class from her bag, that she had manipulated with an undetectable extension charm, and flipped it open on the desk.

She felt a burning gaze sear into the back of her head. Uncomfortable and perplexed, Odette turned around in her seat to find her gaze met with the silver eyes of Draco Malfoy. He seemed to have been lost in thought until the moment their eyes met.

Malfoy's eyes darkened and he swiftly looked away.

She had a difficult time focusing during the entire class, even when Professor McGonagall taught them to turn a raven into a writing desk. Odette could still feel a lingering gaze on her the entire duration of the class.

When the lesson ended, she had rushed out as quickly as she could. Eager to find a quiet place by the alcoves or stairs so that she could review her letter before she went to the owlery and deliver it to her mother.

Only—the letter was no where to be found.

She must have dropped it in her haste to stow away. Odette hurriedly retraced her steps, determined to reach the classroom before the next batch of students would occupy it for their next lesson.

When she reached the heavy door and pushed it open, it revealed a classroom that wasn't as empty as she had hoped. A lone figure stood by her desk. He was tall and had one of his hands placed upon the surface of the oakwood desk—the exact spot where she had been scribling down her notes.

He looked up when she entered, startled silver met her equally surprised gaze. It was Malfoy.

His right hand was still resting on the surface of the desk. In his left hand, the opened envelope and the letter. The parchment was pinched between his long fingers and she felt her heart falter for a moment.

He had read it.

Odette didn't know what to feel about the realisation. Embarrassed and slightly peeved, perhaps. But she was mostly mortified that something so personal as a letter addressed to her mother was in the hands of Draco Malfoy. She quickly retraced her memories in order to remember if she had disclose anything embarrassing in the parchment.

His gaze followed hers to his hand—to the letter more specifically—and lifted it deftly. "It was on the floor."

Her eyes snapped up to look at him, trying to find her voice. "It's—mine. I accidentally dropped it."

"I see." Malfoy paused for a brief moment before he reached over to return it to her.

Their fingers brushed lightly and they both hastily looked away.

Odette parted her mouth to say something, but she didn't know what to say in order to fill the awkward silence. Malfoy turned to look at her, his icy gaze rested on her face for barely a moment.

He lingered for a second, then he swept past her and exited the classroom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hopefully you’re enjoying the story so far! i would love to hear your thoughts on it <3

**Author's Note:**

> i’m unable to post the character aesthetics here, so if you’re curious you can check them out [here](https://www.wattpad.com/1011048372?utm_source=ios&utm_medium=link&utm_content=share_writing&wp_page=create_writer&wp_uname=peculiarlamb&wp_originator=Fdbq8OR895IyBbbNGzO9uZvtNMPjtsdJ%2B7DGzwwtlgci6gXXOl8raqaJpQU6Jxn1%2F6AbojLWRilDkAu1BM%2BmAQ6U4x8njRddc8l3PqESYyZj7%2Fq58WOtm6zFrP75dOhj).


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